Chapter 14 - Tatiana
Shouts woke me up, and I sprang out of bed, slamming into the door before I was even fully conscious. This was no drill, because I wasn’t at home, and my father wouldn’t be at the bottom of the stairs, timing how fast it took me to get to the safe room.
If there was a safe room here, I didn’t know where it was.
Nor did I have any way to defend myself.
Still, I found myself tearing open the door, relieved I wasn’t locked in while unknown mayhem was taking place outside.
Kon must not have come home last night, or he’d have forgotten to lock in his prisoner.
I stopped dead in the mouth of the hallway leading into the living area, gaping as I quickly assessed what was going on. One of the guards was dragging Kon into the wide, open area, both of them covered in blood and leaving a trail all down the shiny parquet floor.
Instead of trying to jump out of my throat, my heart seemed to stutter to a halt. Everything seemed very slow, but hectic and frenzied at the same time. I skidded the rest of the distance to where the guard had stopped, now on his knees and pressing frantically at Kon’s shoulder with his palms.
So it was Kon who was injured. My mind went blank because I couldn’t process that. Running back down the hall, I grabbed every towel I could carry out of my bathroom and hurried back to where Kon lay, his eyes closed, his face sickly pale. And so much blood.
I slid to my knees beside the guard and pushed a towel under his hand, then reached for the phone sticking out of his back pocket.
“Tell me how to unlock it,” I said, meaning to call for an ambulance. That was usually a no-no in the Bratva, but this looked really bad.
Kon revived enough to swipe it out of my hand, sending it skating across the floor to rest under the couch. I could stop helping the guard keep pressure on his wound or go after it.
“Don’t be so opportunistic,” he growled, then closed his eyes again.
The asshole thought I was taking this opportunity to try to get away? “I was calling for help,” I snapped.
His eyes opened again, and despite his obvious pain, he managed to look smug. “That’s why I knocked it out of your hand, Tatiana.”
“Help for you, idiot.”
“That’s not very nice.”
I should have been trying to get help for myself, or at the very least fleeing out the door during the confusion. So why wasn’t I?
Because a man was bleeding out in front of me, that was why. Asshole or not, I wasn’t the kind of person to walk away from something like that. And I still needed answers from this particular jerk, so I scurried over to grab the phone and thrust it at the guard.
“So call the private doctor, then.” The Fokins would certainly have one or a dozen of them on call at all times for situations like this.
“Already on the way,” the guard said tersely, resting back on his heels. “I think it’s slowing down.”
“Or he’s running out of blood to bleed,” I said, taking over, putting the pressure on.
Kon somehow laughed at me, even while I was trying to keep him alive, and I barely resisted the urge to dig my nails into his wound. And even with leaving at least a pint of his blood all over the floor, the stubborn man was struggling to sit up.
“I’m fine. It’s nothing. I need to get back out there.”
“Like hell you do. Do you have some kind of contingency plan for me if you die?”
He laughed again, but the sound was weak, and he’d turned white as chalk from the effort to hoist himself to his elbow. He fell back onto the floor, swearing.
“They killed my guy. That can’t stand.”
“We’re going after him, Boss,” his guard said. “We’ve got three people combing the area.”
“And what the hell are you doing here?” Kon asked, sounding shockingly menacing despite his weakened state.
“He’s trying to keep you alive,” I said, pressing harder so he’d shut up.
Didn’t work. “I’m fine,” he said. “And you’re here. Surely you wouldn’t take advantage of this situation, right?”
Now I laughed, but only because he was being ridiculous. The guard knew better than to argue further and hustled out the door, leaving me alone.
So now what? How far could I get with his men swarming the streets? Perhaps a fighting chance if they were preoccupied with finding the men who’d instigated this attack.
Kon groaned. “I barely got a shot off before the bastard ran away.” Pulling his uninjured arm up, he wiped his hand down his face, leaving a smear of blood. “Now a man is dead.”
“Shut up,” I said. “It’s part of the job.”
“So your father did teach you something. Kind of a ruthless lesson.”
“What part of shut up didn’t you understand?” I said. The guard who left was right. The bleeding did seem to be slowing down, but that might not have been good news if it meant Kon was on the verge of dying.
“On my twelfth birthday, there was an incident at our house,” I said, thinking that if I kept talking, he’d save his strength. “Two men I knew my whole life were killed, and I was inconsolable.”
“You thought it was your fault,” Kon rasped.
“Because they were protecting me,” I agreed. “And Papa told me that was part of the job. It’s a great honor to die in service.”
“That’s bullshit.”
I was surprised to hear the fierce Konstantin Fokin admit that. “Yeah, I knew it then, too. But it’s part of the job.”
He stayed silent after that, and I switched out the towel for a fresh one, dropping the sodden one behind me so I couldn’t see it.
Not that there wasn’t blood everywhere else.
It felt like an hour, but it probably wasn’t twenty minutes before the private surgeon arrived with an assistant, both of them carrying a bunch of equipment to set up a makeshift hospital.
I followed their barked orders, and soon Kon was in his own bed, hooked up to an IV pumping new blood into his vein, his shoulder stitched up and patched.
There had been quite a bit of yowling and growling from the room while they dug the bullet out, but Kon had refused anything that would knock him out, insisting he was fine.
“Macho asshole,” I muttered, trying to help hold him down.
He shouted for me to get out, and so now I was relegated to the hall in case I was needed again. The doctor and his nurse emerged, both of them looking slightly irritated at having to deal with such a giant pain in the butt.
“He was right,” the doctor said begrudgingly. “It wasn’t that serious. He’ll be causing you trouble again in no time.”
I wondered who the doctor thought I was to Kon.
A girlfriend? An assistant? If I filled him in on my true status as a prisoner, he’d probably escort me back to my bedroom and lock me in himself.
Total loyalty was what had got him the job as on-call emergency surgeon to the Fokins, and truckloads of money and the ever-looming threat of a painful death kept him there.
He’d jump over the balcony to his demise before ever dreaming of helping me.
“There was so much blood,” I said. “He’s really going to be fine?”
“Right as rain.”
The doctor left, leaving behind his assistant in case anything else went awry, but unless there was even more gunfire, everything was currently okay.
I found myself in the kitchen, making coffee with shaking hands, breathing out a lungful of air that felt like it had been trapped since I woke up to the bloodbath. Why was I so relieved? It would have been a lot easier for me if Kon had dropped dead.
The housekeeper arrived, tutted at the blood smeared everywhere, and began humming as she filled a bucket of sudsy water.
Another Tuesday working for the Fokins. I carried my coffee into Kon’s room and pulled up an armchair to his bedside, watching the slow drip of plasma from the bag hanging from the headboard.
“I really would be better off if you were dead,” I whispered, reaching out to move some hair off his brow. I left my palm resting there a moment, assuring myself that he wasn’t spiking a fever before moving it away.
So why was I so relieved that he wasn’t dead?
Because no one else was looking for my father besides Kon. That had to be the reason. Even if his motives weren’t good, he was my best chance at finding Papa.